


Prince Charming

by thequidditchpitch_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Comedy, Fluff, Post War, Post-War, Romance, The Quidditch Pitch: Eternity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-02
Updated: 2008-08-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 16:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10812585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequidditchpitch_archivist/pseuds/thequidditchpitch_archivist
Summary: Neville reluctantly agrees to an interview with Witch Weekly and gets more than he bargained for.





	Prince Charming

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** Written for Nevilleloving

“Well, there you go, dear, and one last question, is there someone special in your life that you’d like to tell us about?”

“Huh?”  Neville was really trying to concentrate, but his mind was already where he needed to be next.  It didn’t help that this whole process made him want to hex his own brain.

“Any particular girl? Neville frowned and bit his lip. His interviewer’s long, crimson nails clicking together were making him really uncomfortable, not to mention the fact that she was licking her (also crimson) lips as if she was a cougar and he was a particularly juicy piece of meat. Why the hell was his love life anyone else’s business, anyway?  "Or a boy...?”

 

“Girl,” Neville said firmly, and no…”

...Not that I want to talk about, anyway.  He sighed, wondering for the thousandth time why he’d ever agreed to do this. Normally, he shied away from public notice whenever possible, but it was good for the business after all, and that was the important thing.  He really, really wanted his nursery to take off.  Well it had taken off, but he’d like it to grow even further, to flourish, to thrive, and…he really needed to stop thinking in Herbology terms. 

"I’m sorry, what?" he asked, when he realized she was asking him a question.  “A picture?  Really?  All right, then,” he said, and allowed himself to be maneuvered into a chair, where someone began fussing with his hair.  When they started putting stuff on his face, however, he found it necessary to object, not even giving in when he was told (in a voice that made him feel like a firstie being sent to the Head of House’s office) that it was always done this way in magazines, that everybody wore makeup, that he would look simply dreadful if he didn’t. 

“No,” Neville said.  “I’ll look like me, and if that’s not good enough for your readers then I don’t want any part of it.”

Feeling a little better, he made his way to the studio, telling himself that it was best to just get it over with.  It was clear fairly quickly that the photographer fancied himself an artist—he kept nattering on about light and shadow and composition and black and white versus color.  In the meantime, Neville sat there, stiff as a board as the man clicked away, frowning as if Neville was profoundly irritating.  Well, Neville was used to it, wasn't he, and anyway it was a damn sight better than Potions, right?

Then they brought out a sort of worktop on wheels and posed him in front of it--surrounded by various gardening implements and plants.  They wanted him to pretend to be trimming up a Flutterby bush that was hardly old enough to get its first blossom, (and clearly in no need of trimming) but he compromised by transplanting it into a bigger pot for them, which actually got him feeling much more comfortable and smiling a bit. 

He still didn’t get why they would want to photograph him here in a fake garden rather than his own (which was only an Apparition away, after all) but when he asked the photographer, that only got him going off on the ‘natural versus artificial light’ thing again.

After they rolled the worktop out of the way, they put up a backdrop that looked suspiciously like a castle and Neville began to get a funny sort of prickling at the back of his neck.  When they brought out a well-tailored Hogwarts robe and a sword with fake rubies glued all over it, he felt his temper rising.

“No, absolutely not!  This was supposed to be about the business, not the war.   How many times do I have to tell you people I don’t want to talk about that any more, let alone act it out again?”

The photographer seemed a little startled by his outburst and whined, “But how can you expect to get any votes, then?   I mean, our readers aren’t going to get excited about any old bloke gardening, are they?  If they wanted that, they could just look out the window at their own husbands.”

Neville’s mouth dropped open.   “Vote? What vote?”

“The Most Charming Smile award.  Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

“Absolutely bloody not, and I’m going to kill that Skeeter woman,” Neville growled, and as he stalked out of the room, the photographer finally began to give credence to all those stories about this one facing Voldemort armed only with his bollocks.

It’s a wonder the Dark Lord didn’t piss in his pants at the time, (or possibly do something else in them) thought the man, feeling unaccountably warm.  And why the hell hadn’t he thought to get a picture of that face, anyway?

 

*****

“Well, you won,” Lavender said, her face hidden behind a magazine as she walked into the second greenhouse.  Neville kissed her absentmindedly as he was busy trying to pull off a tricky bit of grafting.

“Most Charming Smile,” Lavender said, kissing him with a bit more enthusiasm.  “Well, how could you not, with those pictures?  You look absolutely gorgeous, but however did they talk you into them? And why didn’t you tell me you were in the running?”

It took a minute for the words to register, and Neville finally gave up on the graft.  “What pictures?” he asked, certain that he was hearing wrong.  Maybe Lavender got turned on watching him pot a plant, but that was her, and she loved him.  Besides, he’d always said she was just a little bit mental.

“Let me see it,” he asked, and she merely shook her head, turning the page and, whistling.  

“No, I’m not done yet.  And it looks like I’m going to have to fight off all your adoring fangirls again for a bit.  Not that I mind, darling.  I’m clearly the luckiest girl on earth.

“Show me the damn magazine,” Neville demanded, and at the change in his voice, Lavender got that look in her eyes again, and started licking her lips. 

“What’ll you give me for it, then?”

 “A smacked bottom,” he said, and laughed, and then she laughed and dropped the magazine.   Before he could lunge for it, she was kissing him hard and then she’d hopped up on the potting table and she had her legs wrapped around him and her chest pressed against his and for some time after that, the magazine and whatever pictures of him were in it completely slipped his mind.

****

Later that afternoon, as Neville was finishing up his projects and cleaning up the area around them, he spotted the magazine lying in a heap on the floor.  He picked it up, and while brushing off the dirt, he caught sight of a photograph of a man in a small field, pulling at a gnarled tree stump, his (bare) back slick with perspiration and straining with the effort. 

It can’t be, he thought—you’d think he’d recognize his own back, but then he didn’t make a habit of looking at himself in the mirror for long, and certainly not from behind. 

On the next page, however, he recognized his face glistening under a spray of water from his wand, clearly enjoying the shock of cold after such a hot, sticky task.

It was like the cover of one of Lav’s bloody romance novels, he thought in horror, and it hit him then that Rita Skeeter and that prissy photographer of hers had outwitted him, and apparently had a rather good magnification lens on the camera, too. 

He looked through the rest of the magazine in a mixture of rage and mortification.  He was going to kill them.  He was going to stomp the camera into little bits and take that fake sword of theirs and stick it up their arses.  He was going to….

He was going to have to put up with years of Shay and Dean and Ron and Harry taking the mickey out on him and (just as Lavender suspected) probably also put up with women approaching him with lewd offers the way they had after the battle.  And it was going to turn her on, because (as he’d always thought) she was just the smallest bit mental and got off on that sort of thing, so at least his sex life would improve. Not that it wasn’t already bloody brilliant. 

And it’d be good for business, he reckoned.

He crumpled up the magazine in his hands.  What would his eleven year-old self have made of this turn of events?  It was quite funny, when you looked at it that way. Anyway, he’d never have believed it. Neville Longbottom, winning a sodding beauty contest.  What was the world coming to, anyway?  Dropping the magazine into the dustbin, he incinerated it, feeling some satisfaction as he watched the pages blacken and crumple.  Still, there was a bit of a grin on his face and a blush to his cheeks as he made his way home to his girl.


End file.
